UK BUSINESS AI UNIVERSE: Labs: New labs 2025–26

Founded

2025 (Tech Funding News, trade, single)

Founders

Talfan Evans — co-founder and CEO; Olivier Henaff — co-founder (name from Tech Funding News only)

Chief executive

Talfan Evans — from null

Hq

London (England: London) (Tech Funding News); other_offices: null

What it does

A London lab founded by former DeepMind staff, building AI agents that keep learning from real-world use, using foundation models for predicting behaviour and reasoning over long tasks. It was described as still in stealth in April 2026.

Research focus

continual learning; self-improving agents; behavioural prediction; long-horizon reasoning

Compute

Sovereign AI / AIRR compute, one of six firms — 16 April 2026

Funding total as published

null (investor named by Tech Funding News: SuperSeed; amount undisclosed)

Uk government links

Sovereign AI / AIRR compute — 16 April 2026 (already DEAL-LAB-2035)

Status now

Active London lab in stealth, using Sovereign AI compute since April 2026.

What it does (Labs Round 8)

Not stated (no citable source opened)

Awards and programmes

Sovereign AI / AI Research Resource compute programme — Apr 2026 (already DEAL-LAB-2035; not re-opened this round)

Status now (Labs Round 8)

Not stated — not verified this round

Labs Round 7 and Labs Round 8 deep profile (30–31 Oct 2026), as the researchers wrote it; confidence: one source (nothing verified) ---.

Sources

1. gov.uk/government/news/ai-firms-pioneering-drug-
2. sovereignai.gov.uk/post/our-first-investments
3. telecomtv.com/content/digital-platforms-services
4. techfundingnews.com/uks-sovereign-ai-fund-names-

Owner or parent

DSIT and UKRI (EPSRC)

Founded or opened

funding call announced 4 Mar 2026

Lab director or lead

Not stated in the call. Raia Hadsell — VP of Research at Google DeepMind and UK government AI Ambassador — chairs the peer-review panel (Mar 2026)

Other leaders

Dr Kedar Pandya — Executive Director, Strategy Directorate, EPSRC; Kanishka Narayan MP — AI Minister

What it does

A government plan, announced in March 2026, to fund a lab doing high-risk, blue-sky AI research. The lab is to tackle flaws in current models, such as hallucinations, short memory and unpredictability, and to try new architectures instead of only scaling up existing ones. On 23 June 2026 UKRI-EPSRC funded two labs from a £60m six-year scheme: SOFAIR at UCL and BOLD at Oxford. No page I opened says these came from the March call.

Research groups or focus

basic flaws in current models (hallucinations, short memory, unpredictability); more accurate, transparent and trustworthy AI; new AI architectures

Funding or budget as published

up to £40m over six years, plus in-kind AI Research Resource compute "worth tens of millions of pounds" — 4 Mar 2026 — https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-create-new-lab-to-keep-uk-in-the-fast-lane-on-ai-breakthroughs (already DEAL-LAB-6002). Related: up to £60m over six years for SOFAIR and BOLD (SOFAIR's initial share £8m) — 23 Jun 2026 (new deal DEAL-LAB-15001)

Partners named

SOFAIR Lab — led by Professor David Barber (UCL), with Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh — Jun 2026; BOLD Lab — led by Jakob Foerster (Oxford), with UCL and Imperial — Jun 2026; NVIDIA — compute for both labs within its $250m UK commitment — Oct 2026

Uk government links

DSIT and UKRI; AIRR compute; launched under UKRI's AI Strategy

Status now

The call closed into two funded labs announced on 23 Jun 2026 (SOFAIR at UCL, BOLD at Oxford), although no opened page explicitly ties them to this call.

Labs Round 8 deep profile (31 Oct 2026), as the researchers wrote it; confidence: verified (call: GOV.UK and UKTN; SOFAIR/BOLD funding: UCL and UKTN); the link between the call and the two labs is unverified.

Sources

1. gov.uk/government/news/government-to-create-new-
2. uktech.news/ai/uk-backs-new-ai-research-labs-in-
3. ucl.ac.uk/news/2026/jun/national-research-lab-ba
4. nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-commits-250-mi

What it does

Not stated (no citable source opened)

Status now

Not stated — not verified (a directory lists it as inactive; see Gaps)

Labs Round 8 deep profile (31 Oct 2026), as the researchers wrote it; confidence: one source (nothing verified; record should stay thin until a primary source is found); sources are listed in the record panel.

Legal name

Ineffable Intelligence Ltd (website terms; registered office stated as Altrincham, Cheshire)

Founded

null (David Silver's note on setting up the company dated 15 Jan 2026)

Founders

David Silver — founder and CEO

Chief executive

David Silver — from null

Chief scientist or research lead

David Silver (professor at University College London; formerly led the reinforcement learning team at Google DeepMind)

Hq

London (England: London); other_offices: null

What it does

AI research lab building a "superlearner" — an AI system that learns from its own experience through reinforcement learning rather than from human data — with the stated aim of "making first contact with superintelligence".

Research focus

large-scale reinforcement learning; systems that learn continuously from experience

Models and products

null (none announced)

Customers or partners named

NVIDIA — engineering collaboration on RL infrastructure — 13 May 2026 — https://www.ineffable.ai/blog/nvidia-ineffable-intelligence-team-up-to-build-the-future-of-reinforcement-learning-infrastructure; Google Cloud — preferred cloud partner — 16 Jun 2026 — https://www.uktech.news/ai/ineffable-intelligence-and-google-cloud-partner-on-new-frontier-ai-lab-20260616

Compute

Co-designing RL training infrastructure with NVIDIA, starting on Grace Blackwell and among the first to explore Vera Rubin (13 May 2026); Google Cloud chosen as preferred cloud partner for RL infrastructure (16 Jun 2026)

Funding total as published

1,100,000,000 USD (£814m) seed — 28 Apr 2026 — (trade) UKTN

Valuation reported

null ("not disclosed" per UKTN)

Rounds found

2026-04-28 — seed — 1,100,000,000 USD (£814m) — lead not named by UKTN (site holds Sequoia and Lightspeed as co-leads, DEAL-LAB-025) — Sovereign AI Unit (co-investing with British Business Bank), British Business Bank ($20m separately), Sequoia, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, Index, Google, EQT, Evantic, Flying Fish, DST Global, BOND

Uk government links

Sovereign AI Unit co-invested with the British Business Bank in the seed round — 28 Apr 2026

Status now

Emerged from stealth in spring 2026 with a $1.1bn seed round and compute partnerships with NVIDIA and Google Cloud; no model released.

Labs Round 7 deep profile (30 Oct 2026), as the researchers wrote it; confidence: single_source (funding trade-only; company site does not state it).

Sources

1. ineffable.ai/
2. ineffable.ai/blog/nvidia-ineffable-intelligence-
3. ineffable.ai/terms-and-conditions

Legal name

null (site footer reads "© 2026 Inherent Laboratories"; the site says it is incorporated as a Public Benefit Corporation; Companies House not checked)

Founders

Tantum Collins — Co-Founder & CEO; Edward Hughes — Co-Founder & Chief Scientist; Louis Kirsch — Co-Founder; Kaloyan Aleksiev — Co-Founder & CTO

Chief executive

Tantum Collins — from null

Chief scientist or research lead

Edward Hughes — Co-Founder & Chief Scientist

Other leaders

Matt Clifford — adviser (tech.eu)

Hq

London (England: London); other_offices: null

What it does

A London AI research lab building "general-purpose inventive AI" to speed up scientific research. Its system, Faraday, is meant to let people and self-improving AI work together on hard scientific problems. It says it applies recursive self-improvement to its models and to how it runs research.

Research focus

recursive self-improvement; AI Scientist agents; open-ended research; human–machine teaming; autonomous labs

Models and products

Faraday — AI system for scientific discovery — announced May 2026; reported in August 2026 to run on Qwen 3.6 with 27 billion parameters (trade, single)

Papers and awards

"Training AI Scientists to Replicate Research" — 14 August 2026 (inherentlabs.ai/research)

Funding total as published

50,000,000 USD — as of 29 May 2026 — https://tech.eu/2026/05/29/london-based-ai-lab-inherent-emerges-from-stealth-with-50m-raise/

Rounds found

2026-05-29 — seed — 50,000,000 USD — Index Ventures and Radical Ventures (co-leads) — none named (already DEAL-LAB-027 / DEAL-LAB-2009)

Uk government links

null (tech.eu describes adviser Matt Clifford as a former government AI adviser)

Status now

Active London research lab that left stealth in May 2026 and published its first research post in August 2026.

Labs Round 7 deep profile (30 Oct 2026), as the researchers wrote it; confidence: verified (founders, roles, round: investor page plus trade); Faraday model details single_source.

Sources

1. radical.vc/portfolio/inherent/
2. tech.eu/2026/05/29/london-based-ai-lab-inherent-
3. inherentlabs.ai/
4. inherentlabs.ai/research/
5. newsbytesapp.com/news/science/deepmind-alumni-s-

Legal name

null (site footer "© 2026 Metis Reasoning")

Founded

null (public launch 20 October 2026)

Founders

Thore Graepel — co-founder (AlphaGo co-creator; left Google DeepMind summer 2026); Piers Ingram — co-founder; Michael Warren — co-founder (robotics, ex-Boeing); David Berman — co-founder (Head of AI, Cambridge Consultants)

Hq

London (England: London); other_offices: Singapore; Los Angeles (as listed in the white paper, per The Next Web)

Headcount

12 — October 2026 — https://tech.eu/2026/10/20/former-google-deepmind-top-researcher-launches-london-compute-efficient-ai-company/ (trade; The Next Web repeats tech.eu)

What it does

A London lab working on AI reasoning that it says needs much less compute than frontier large language models. It wants systems that keep an auditable record of what they know and how sure they are, for high-stakes work in robotics, science and engineering. It has published a white paper but no model or test results.

Research focus

"generalizable machine reasoning"; embodied AI, science and engineering; approach drawn from AlphaGo/AlphaZero self-play and Jaakko Hintikka's inquirer-versus-nature game (white paper, per The Next Web)

Models and products

The Age of Reasoning — white paper — October 2026; no model released

Papers and awards

"The Age of Reasoning" white paper — October 2026

Compute

says its design is "much much more compute-efficient" than frontier models — October 2026

Funding total as published

null (reported to be raising tens of millions of dollars; the company would not confirm the amount)

Uk government links

David Berman described as a UK government and NATO AI adviser (tech.eu) — October 2026

Status now

Launched publicly in London on 20 October 2026; no product or results released.

Labs Round 7 deep profile (30 Oct 2026), as the researchers wrote it; confidence: single_source (founders and headcount from trade only; the company site names no people).

Sources

1. tech.eu/2026/10/20/former-google-deepmind-top-re
2. thenextweb.com/news/metis-reasoning-thore-graepe
3. metisreasoning.ai/

Founded

null (emerged from stealth 13 May 2026)

Founders

Richard Socher — leads the company "alongside seven co-founders" (former chief scientist at Salesforce, founder of You.com); Yuandong Tian — co-founder (former research scientist director, Meta FAIR); Tim Rocktäschel — co-founder (Professor of AI, UCL; former principal scientist, Google DeepMind); Alexey Dosovitskiy — co-founder; Josh Tobin — co-founder (formerly OpenAI); Caiming Xiong — co-founder; Tim Shi — co-founder; Jeff Clune — co-founder

Chief executive

Richard Socher — leads the company (title not stated in source)

Other leaders

Peter Norvig — adviser

Hq

London (England: London) per BusinessCloud; other_offices: San Francisco

Headcount

more than 25 — May 2026 — BusinessCloud and TNW (both trade)

What it does

AI research company building systems that run their own experiments to improve themselves safely — "recursive self-improvement" through open-ended automated scientific discovery.

Research focus

recursive self-improvement; automated scientific discovery

Compute

null (NVIDIA and AMD are investors)

Funding total as published

650,000,000 USD (£480m) — May 2026 — trade

Valuation reported

4,650,000,000 USD — 14 May 2026 — (trade) TNW; about £3.5bn — 14 May 2026 — (trade) BusinessCloud (two trade sources; no primary opened)

Rounds found

2026-05-13 — first round (TNW: emerged from stealth; other listings call it Series A — not verified) — 650,000,000 USD / £480m — GV, Greycroft — NVIDIA, AMD (Ventures)

Status now

Emerged from stealth in May 2026 with $650m at a reported $4.65bn valuation; offices in London and San Francisco.

Labs Round 7 deep profile (30 Oct 2026), as the researchers wrote it; confidence: single_source (two trade sources, no primary); sources are listed in the record panel.